New Kickstarter to Fund Memorial Sculpture for D&D’s Gary Gygax
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A new crowdfunding campaign has just kicked off with the goal of creating a memorial sculpture for Dungeons Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax, which will be located in the town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (the former headquarters of TSR and the birthplace of the popular GenCon event).
Gygax passed away in 2008 after essentially creating the modern tabletop roleplaying game industry as we know it, and his widow, Gail Gygax has since established the Gygax Memorial Fund, which is running the upcoming Kickstarter.
So will this new memorial honor one of the TTRPGs legendary figures? Below, we take a look at all the details.
What is the Gary Gygax Memorial Fund Kickstarter?
The new Kickstarter is setting to raise the funds to make what they are described as a “Gygax Memorial Table.” The bronze and stone sculpture will consist of a table with a dungeon map on it and a statue of Gygax at one end sitting on a throne on one end. The full project is looking for a total of $925,000 USD in backing (although they have scaled back versions for lower funding amounts).
If completed, the new memorial will be located in Library Park, in a spot that Gygax himself chose. It’s expected, however, that it would take several years to complete, with the basic elements of the sculpture to be established in October 2026.
Rewards for bakers range from a mention on the official Gygax Memorial Fund website to having your name placed a “Wall of Honor” located near the final installation. All bakers will also receive a PDF of an old-school 18-level dungeon adventure written by game designer and historian Paul Stormberg.
Final Thoughts
It’s great to see attempts being made to commemorate the life of one of pop culture’s most influential figures, and hopefully it will generate enough funding for the project to be completed. The Kickstarter will be launching on October 1st and you can learn more on their backer page.
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Cameron Nichols is a Senior Editor who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and has been playing D&D since the early 90s, when he was introduced by his older brother and cut his teeth on AD&D 2nd Edition. Since then he’s played virtually every RPG he could get his nerdy little mitts on (including a weird Goth phase in the early 2000s when he rocked Vampire: The Masquerade pretty hard). His favorite D&D campaign setting is the Forgotten Realms and his favorite character to play was a Half-Orc Barbarian named Grug (who was unfortunately devoured by a gelatinous cube).
